Code for Americahttp://old.codeforamerica.org
A New Kind of Public ServiceFri, 14 Feb 2014 06:01:04 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6CodeAcross is Here!http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/02/04/codeacross-is-here/
http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/02/04/codeacross-is-here/#commentsTue, 04 Feb 2014 15:00:11 +0000Catherine Bracyhttp://www.codeforamerica.org/?p=29654It’s that time of year again: time to CodeAcross! On the weekend of February 21-23, Code for America, the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation will host 40+ events around the globe. The mission of these events is to have citizens participate in making real progress towards taking open government “Beyond Transparency.” We’re making government data more open and accessible — through taking an inventory of their city’s open data to drafting an open data policy to designing an app powered by that open data.

In its third year, CodeAcross is scheduled to coincide with International Open Data Day. These events are designed to be not just an opportunity to move the ball forward on creating more open and transparent governments but to build communities of citizens who want to participate in strengthening public institutions–on February 21-23 and beyond. This is NOT just another hackathon.

This year, Code for America, OKFN and the Sunlight Foundation have collaborated on three “challenges” that CodeAcross participants of any technical proficiency level can participate in:

On February 21-23, join an event near you! We want citizens of all stripes and backgrounds to participate: coders, activists, designers, organizers, public transit enthusiasts, you name it. You can find a full listing of the events here.

We’re thankful to our sponsors, Esri and Microsoft, for making CodeAcross possible.

]]>http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/02/04/codeacross-is-here/feed/0Fellowship Prototype Apps: Training Through Doinghttp://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/30/prototypeapps/
http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/30/prototypeapps/#commentsFri, 31 Jan 2014 00:21:06 +0000Dana Oshirohttp://www.codeforamerica.org/?p=29555As part of the Fellowship training process, 2014 Fellowship teams were asked to collaborate and build lightweight prototype apps and test their working styles. From research, to needs assessment, to wireframe, to iteration, to prototype design — teams build an early app from start to finish in five hack sessions (over a three week period). While still very basic, these apps show the level of design-thinking and technical skill our Fellows planning on honing during their residencies in our partner cities. A list of a few of those demo apps are listed below.

StreetReel: After meeting with the City of San Francisco, Eric, Lizzie, Drew, Kavi, Livien, and Becky (Team Denver and Team Lexington) built an application to map film production locations around San Francisco. In collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation and using open data from the SF Film Commission, the group prototyped an application in the hopes of better informing residents and city officials of street closures around the city.

TransitMix: In an effort to increase citizen engagement, Sam, Tiffani, and Andrea (Team Atlanta) built an application that shows how malleable a city can truly be. Building on the success of Streetmix, the application allows residents to remix their dream transit routes.

Build San Leandro: Working alongside the City of San Leandro, Jason, Jeremia, Giselle, Clara, Ainsley, and Maksim (Team Chattanooga and Team Puerto Rico) built an application called “Build San Leandro” — an app that lets San Leandro business owners and prospective business owners connect and talk about local opportunities and events. The backend data powering the app comes from a simple Google Spreadsheet that city contacts can fill out. From here, listings and contact info is then pushed to a live website page.

Parking Tradeoffs: Working with the City of Napa and thinking about reuse of a space called COPIA, Wendy, Tom, and Peter (Team Mesa) interviewed residents for their thoughts. Residents interviewed saw the COPIA space in relation to a need for parking for a nearby farmer’s market. The thought sparked the idea for Parking Tradeoffs — an app that gets residents and city contacts thinking about the tradeoffs to different types of land use. While a very rough prototype, when users scroll over the blue percentage text, they’re met with the consequences of a particular land use choice.

Art Hookup: Jeff, Andrew, and Anna Marie (Team Rhode Island) worked with Jake Levitas from the City of San Francisco in relation to Living Innovation Zones. After speaking to a number of community groups, the team recognized that an OKCupid-style art app would allow the city to matchmake artists and city partners for further development. Given the three week timeframe, they instead built a basic message listing board as a prototype where citizens could connect and coordinate new projects.

Hookup with Liz: David, Maya, and Amy (Team San Antonio) also worked with Jake Levitas and Living Innovation Zones (LIZ) to build Hook Up With Liz. This app starts the process for planning in each of the available or proposed LIZ spaces. The app answers questions that help ease the regulatory process and inform the City of potential partnerships.

HoodGuesser: Inspired by Click that ‘Hood, Rhys, Molly, and Daniel (Team Long Beach) created HoodGuesser. The app lets users explore via Google Streetview and allows them to gain perspective on new neighborhoods and while increasing their empathy for their fellow citizens. Users are shown a Streetview of a part of their city and are given a chance to guess the neighborhood. When users are stumped, hints are surfaced from Census data and popular nearby Yelp reviews. The idea here is to gamify the act of familiarizing yourself with a city and challenge others to do the same.

Oakland Lobbyists: Tiffany, Andrew, and Danny (Team Charlotte) worked with the City of Oakland to redesign how lobbyist data is presented to the public and to city officials. Tearing a page from Chicagolobbyists.org’s playbook, the group spoke to a few watchdog organizations as well as their city partner and built an app to track individual lobbyist profiles, clients, financial quarter spending and disclosure documents. The result is an easy-to-understand dashboard.

]]>http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/30/prototypeapps/feed/0Why I Code… In China.http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/30/bruce_haupt/
http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/30/bruce_haupt/#commentsThu, 30 Jan 2014 20:05:32 +0000Bruce Haupthttp://www.codeforamerica.org/?p=29193I live in China and I’m SUPER optimistic about open data and civic engagement.

For the last five years I worked for the City of Houston. Among the many projects I worked on, I was part of the city/community team that launched Houston’s open data and open innovation hackathon initiatives. I worked with really awesome people and had transformative leaders in Mayor Annise Parker and CFO Kelly Dowe. Not everything worked out well, but we were able to ask why we did things, to experiment, and to empower people to make a difference. I coded to empower others and to make things better.

Now I’m in China, Chengdu specifically. It’s a “small city” in western China with 14-16 million people. It’s the capital of the Sichuan Province famous for pandas and the best damn food in the world. Westerners are just now starting to take notice.

Some people told me that I shouldn’t mention open data or civic engagement once I got here. Luckily, there were just as many others who said otherwise. The idea of connecting citizens with government in order to improve public services is very real in China. I’m excited because of the people I talk to along with the work I see civic technologists and the government performing.

Not surprisingly, I see many of the same opportunities I saw in the U.S., except with more scale. I also see the problems, and they are also familiar. Below are things I’ve literally seen written or said about open data in China that explain why China and open data could never get along with one another.” Perhaps you’ll recognize some themes:

“The government doesn’t promote or put any real effort into open data.”

“The government data is not trustworthy or accurate.”

“The government doesn’t release information that could make it look bad.”

“The government subject matter experts cannot be found. No one can answer questions.”

“The government doesn’t like the term ‘hackers’, which has a serious negative connotation here.”

All these comments resonate with my experience in Houston. I’ve also seen and heard them from most of my peers in government and civic tech circles in the U.S. The west may be further ahead in terms of open data and civic tech, but not that far ahead and we also still have a lot of work to be done.

The Sichuan Province Fact Book is a good example, which has enormous amounts of useful commercial information. It’s not machine readable, and not super accessible, but it’s not hidden. There is more information like this published online too, although none of it is easy for westerners to understand since it’s in Chinese. Naturally, we have lots of information published this way as well.

China’s Smart City Open Data Platform is also very interesting. They rolled out their Love City Platform to a handful of municipalities, including Qingdao and its nine million residents, and are planning implementation in ~30 more cities. That’s BIG initiative, especially if it can be done successfully across jurisdictions.

These activities are supported by conversations I’ve personally had with Chinese government delegations in the U.S. who were looking to better understand open data and how it ties to innovation. I’m more bullish than OKFN’s Feng Gao. I see iterative progress that can be built upon, and China’s reasons to support open data are the same powerful arguments that convinced my government colleagues in the U.S. — it goes beyond transparency.

Community Interest > Data.

However, open data alone is not enough. There must be civic and business interest in the data, and there must be mutual value for the government and external parties.

In China there is absolutely external interest. As reported by Rebecca Chao in The Hunt for Open Data in China, open data and civic tech has really been led by the community. Community members, businesses and developers are requesting the data they need. When they don’t get it, they’re finding innovative ways to obtain the data, like Cui Anyang scraping JPEG’s to get water quality data (kudos).

Open data is also generating goodwill. Bu Shujian learned that available Chinese government data was not necessarily inaccurate or fake. As Chao reported, she was interested in comparing air quality reporting by the Chinese and U.S. Governments, and was skeptical of the data from the Chinese. Interestingly, she found the differences were due to different calculations and the Chinese Government’s use of more data points from across the city (which could mean their reporting was more accurate).

Of course there are hackathons too! The community and the value is there, and people are rallying together over weekends on projects just like we do. At one of my first dinners in China, a friend in Beijing told me about the Cleanweb Hackathon they hosted just months before I arrived. There are many, many hackathons in China.

Similar to what we see in the U.S., the value of open data in China will result from the merger of the government’s open data with the community and business world’s ability to deliver impact and mutual value with it.

Why I Code in China.

I believed in Code for America and Open Houston because we could engage government with citizens and businesses to make a real difference in terms of services and dollars. People and organizations could be empowered to work together toward building better lives.

From the people to the government, I think there’s no reason not to Code for China and many are doing it already (albeit without CfA track jackets). Importantly, it’s a different language and a very different culture that takes time to understand.

I believe we should be very excited about what’s happening here. In the meantime… I’m off to learning more of a new language and it’s not for programming! 我住在中国。我喜欢学韩语。我爱吃中餐。再见！

We chose to work with ClearLeft because they develop a pattern portfolio (a pattern/style library) which would allow us to scale our work to our Brigades. This unique approach has aligned perfectly with our work style and decentralized organizational structure.

Thankfully, I think the approach of delivering a pattern portfolio (instead of just pages) isn’t so unique these days. Mind you, it still seems to be more common with in-house teams than agencies. The Mailchimp pattern library is a classic example.

These style guides and pattern libraries aren’t being published in an attempt to provide ready-made solutions—every project should have its own distinct pattern library. Instead, these pattern libraries are being published in a spirit of openness and sharing …a way of saying “Hey, this is what worked for us in these particular circumstances.”

If you’re poking around the Code for America style guide, you’ll notice that it borrows some ideas from the pattern primer idea I published a while back. But in this iteration, the markup is available via a toggle—a nice variation. There’s also a patchwork page that provides a nice glance-able uninterrupted view of the same patterns.

Every project is a learning experience and each front-end style guide gives us ideas about how to do the next one better. In fact, Mark is busy working on better internal tools for creating these kinds of deliverables—something we’ll definitely be sharing. In the meantime, I’ll be encouraging other clients to be as open as Code for America have been in allowing us to share these deliverables.

Questions? Comments? Hit us up <http://twitter.com/codeforamerica”>@codeforamerica.

]]>http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/28/pattern-sharing-incode-for-americas-new-website/feed/0Civic Tech Forecast: 2014http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/27/civic-tech-forecast-2014/
http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/27/civic-tech-forecast-2014/#commentsTue, 28 Jan 2014 01:40:47 +0000Lauren Dysonhttp://www.codeforamerica.org/?p=29439Last year was a big year for civic technology and government innovation, and if last week’s Municipal Innovation discussion was any indication, 2014 promises to be even bigger. More than sixty civic innovators from both inside and outside of government gathered to hear three leading civic tech experts share their “Top Five” list of civic tech trends from 2013m, and predictions for what’s to come in 2014. From responsive web design to overcoming leadership change, guest speakers Luke Fretwell, Juan Pablo Velez, and Alissa Black covered both challenges and opportunities. And the audience had a few predictions of their own. Highlights included:

Mark Leech, Application Development Manager, City of Albuquerque: “Regionalization will allow smaller communities to participate and act as a force multiplier for them.”

Rebecca Williams, Policy Analyst, Sunlight Foundation: “Open data policy (law and implementation) will become more connected to traditional forms of governance, like public records and town hall meetings.”

Rick Dietz, IT Director, City of Bloomington, Ind.: “I think governments will need to collaborate directly more on open source development, particularly on enterprise scale software systems — not just civic apps.”

Kristina Ng, Office of Financial Empowerment, City and County of San Francisco: “I’m excited about the growing community of innovative government workers.”

Hillary Hartley, Presidential Innovation Fellow: “We’ll need to address sustainability and revenue opportunities. Consulting work can only go so far; we must figure out how to empower civic tech companies to actually make money.”

An informal poll of the audience showed that roughly 96 percent of the group was feeling optimistic about the coming year for civic innovation. What’s your civic tech forecast for 2014? Read on to hear what guest speakers Luke Fretwell, Juan Pablo Velez, and Alissa Black had to say, and then let us know how you’re feeling about 2014 by tweeting at @codeforamerica.

Luke Fretwell

Founder, GovFresh

1. Rise of Innovation Offices
After Jay Nath was hired as San Francisco’s Chief Innovation Officer in 2012, the idea of creating designated roles and programs devoted to innovation in government took off in 2013. This surge was not only programs devoted to spurring innovation internally, but also those which involve others in creating innovation in government, with governments from the San Francisco Mayor’s Office to the White House launching innovation fellowship programs of their own.

2. GitHub for Government
“Not just the tool, but the philosophy, has exploded in government,” says Fretwell. GitHub hired Ben Balter as government evangelist to introduce government to what open source means and how to do it; Philadelphia has used it as a tool to streamline the RFP process; and San Francisco posted its municipal code. Internationally, the United Kingdom published the code for their Gov.UK website and New Zealand has forked it to build https://beta.govt.nz — potentially saving millions of dollars.

3. Responsive Web Design
More than 30 states have embraced this practice to design once for all devices, ensuring that there’s no need to build a devoted mobile website or app.

4. Agile Approaches
Government is beginning to realize that the “waterfall” approach doesn’t work with modern technology (case in point: Healthcare.gov) and scrum and agile approaches must be adopted to ensure better results. Fretwell predicts that hiring agile skills into government will become a priority in 2014, as will introducing the concept of building in beta.

5. Community and Collaboration
This year, communities of civic hackers collaborated in deeper ways with cities and entrepreneurs: The CfA Brigade program took off, and we saw the rise of what Jason Hibbets calls the “citizen deputy CIO.” That was a huge step forward and will only continue.

Juan-Pablo Velez

Data Scientist, Civic Insight
Organizer, Chicago Open Gov Hack Night

1. The Growth of the Civic Tech Sector
The community is growing on all fronts: A new batch of CfA alumni every year, more startups and investment entering the space, a growing network of innovators inside government, and academia is introducing new research and graduate level programs in the space. In the media, civic hacking has become a mainstream term. All of this indicates that the ecosystem is maturing.

2. Data Science in Government
In Silicon Valley, predictive algorithms have transformed the ability to mine data for insights to build better products and services, and this approach is starting to trickle into the public sector too. “In Chicago, we’re using it for bike planning. New York City and Chicago both have analytics teams. I helped organize a fellowship called Data Science for Social Good last summer working with governments and we’ll do it again in 2014,” explained Velez.

3. Civic Startups
Emerging from the CfA incubator and other groups, startups are entering the market to take civic tech to scale in a financially sustainable way. While it’s difficult for less established companies to sell to government, companies like OpenCounter are gaining momentum by selling to smaller cities where the barriers are lower.

4. Overcoming Leadership Change
Several cities that have had high-profile open government initiatives — including New York City, Chicago, and Boston — are undergoing political turnover, raising questions about whether their commitment to civic innovation will be sustained through the transition. “Will the new leadership still support innovation initiatives? Or will it die out — like it did in Washington D.C. a few years ago [after gov 2.0 advocate Mayor Adrian Fenty left office]?” questions Velez. “That will tell us a lot about the extent to which civic innovation has become embedded in local government.”

5. Rethinking Procurement
“The barrier to selling to government is very high,” says Velez. “The people who get government contracts are good at getting contracts, not building technology.” To address this, many cities are experimenting with alternative procurement strategies, like Philadelphia’s FastFWD civic startup incubator. Other agencies like Gov.UK and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are hiring technologists inside government to build tech in-house, reducing the need to hire outside contractors altogether.

Alissa Black

1. Regionalism
“As people shift towards larger, dense cities, local governments will be required to collaborate more and think about resource allocation,” says Black. This could lead to a rise in shared service delivery, and an increasingly key role played by metropolitan areas — as Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley outlined in their 2013 book The Metropolitan Revolution.

2. Community and Corporate Data
A recently released McKinsey report indicates high economic value of private sector open data, while a growing number of initiatives (such as LocalData) are focusing on making community-gathered data more open and accessible. Black predicts that municipal open data initiatives will incorporate both neighborhood-level data and private sector data with government data to create a more complete picture of a community.

3. Experimentation Moving Toward Permanence
Now that many city innovation experiments have been running for a few years and proven value, they will begin to shift from pilot stage to established program. “As more local governments incorporate experimentation into their processes, we’ll see initiatives become permanent,” says Black.

4. Participatory Processes
The City of Vallejo, Calif. was the first city to approve participatory budgeting city-wide, and that practice has now spread across the country and the globe. Black predicts that local governments will begin to expand this participatory approach to other processes beyond budgeting.

5. Shift from Consulting the Public to Empowering the Public
Black points out that there’s now less of an emphasis on ideation and crowdsourcing ideas as governments begin to think seriously about how to open up meaningful ways for citizens to participate and collaborate. Creating civic data standards and APIs are one such approach that will help empower people and communities, making government as a platform a reality.

Kiran Jain (@jainkiranc) is an attorney for the City of Oakland with a background in real estate, technology, and municipal law practice. She was also a 2012 Leading by Design fellow at the California College of the Arts. Kiran has worked to bring citizen-centered design into City Hall by leading a series of cross-departmental workshops in Oakland focused on using lightweight, user-centric design methodologies to rethink a cumbersome government process that affects many city agencies and community members: Special Event Permitting.

Kiran recently joined us for a conversation moderated by Cyd Harrell to share results and learnings of applying human centered design in municipal government. Watch the full video here, and read on below are some condensed highlights from the discussion:

Deputy City Attorney is not the typical job title people think of when they think about a “designer.” How did you come to incorporate design principles into your work?

I came to work at the City of Oakland in 2008, right at the height of foreclosure crisis. I was working in this environment where we had limited resources — but unlimited demand. The whole idea of trying to find another way of thinking about traditional government processes really appealed to me. A friend of mine suggested the fellowship at California College of the Arts (CCA).

After diving deeper, I actually found that there’s a lot of similarities between the fields of law and design. Our legal system is based on a set of rules informed by human experience. Those rules have led to layers and layers of process that we now refer to as our bureaucracy. Over time, I think our bureaucracy has become disconnected from human experience — and the intent and feelings that form that human experience. Through design, I’m hoping that we can get back to that intent, and form fresh policies and processes accordingly.

What did you set out to accomplish with civic design in Oakland?

We brought this civic design process to Oakland about a year ago. At that time, Oakland was experiencing about 20 furlough days a year. We were following that old adage by Winston Churchill, “We are out of money; now it’s time to think.” I looked to the design process as a way to rethink traditional government processes and policies in the time of deep budget cuts.

I wanted to apply the methodologies I learned through my fellowship at CCA to a specific process in Oakland. After initial meetings with different city officials, we decided to focus on special event permits. For any event in Oakland — like the Oakland marathon, a street fair, or the Lunar New Year Bazaar — organizers have to get permission from the City. We chose this process for two reasons: there was a deep interest in improving this process among various stakeholders internally, and it touched many different public agencies, including Police, Fire, Parks and Recreation, Public Works, the City Administrator’s office, and Communications. With all the different agencies that are connected to this process, there are many touch points which can lead to frustration not just for event organizers but also for city employees.

In a nutshell, how did you go about doing it?

We broke it down to three different phases. The first was the pre-workshop research, where we gleaned insights from internal stakeholders within government, as well as, external stakeholders who either organized or attended special events. Then, we went through a co-creation workshop with about 15 city employees based on our pre-workshop research, where we were able to learn more about the process and prototype some ideas and solutions for making this a better experience. The third part is execution — to actually develop some of the ideas or prototypes that we developed from our workshop.

What problems did you identify?

Through our pre-workshop research, including stakeholder interviews and a journey mapping exercise, we identified several pain points with the existing process:

The process and costs of permitting was not clear to event organizers or city employees.

Different city agency stops made the process more challenging and confusing for organizers. That was also felt internally.

Communication between our city agencies was not smooth.

When event details changed after the permit approval, it was hard to adjust the cost and services accordingly because the request moves between so many different departments.

There was no clear metric around the value of the event for the city

What was so interesting was that the pain points in the process for event organizers were very similar to those for city employees.

What solutions did you prototype?

After synthesizing our pre-research findings, we held a four hour workshop where we invited the City employees who touched this process to come in and do some brainstorming with us. There was a lot of white boards, post-its, markers, and the like. We presented our research to the folks in the room. The group made a decision early on in the workshop to focus on the process first, rather than the policy. As we discussed the research and the process, five main principles emerged:

Transparency through process visualization

Clearly outlined expectations for all stakeholders

Simple and codified forms

Consistent messaging

Create inclusion through feedback loops in the system

After we established these design principles, we had about an hour where we let people just focus on coming up with ideas that we could prototype. Two of our groups actually came up with a similar idea: the online permit platform. This would be a one stop shop where we collect event information online, complemented by designated intake person from the City to liaison with the event organizers, get all the information needed, and then work with other agencies directly to get permission and fees necessary. The online platform would:

Communicate overall reasons for the permit

Provide detailed instruction

Collect all information needed for each agency

Create a feedback loop with agency sign-off points

The team also mapped out the step-by-step intake process that would need to be followed to actually implement this idea.

As a follow up to this workshop, we are evaluating two different technology solutions for the one-stop-shop. What was so interesting with this process is that we actually started with stakeholder needs and are now trying to identify a technology solution — while what typically happens in government settings is that the technology solution is presented to us and we address the process concerns second.

How long did this process take?

A workshop like this can happen in a short amount of time, if designed correctly. We were very mindful of the fact that we were asking people to do something extra in their day at a time when they were working with very limited resources.

]]>http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/27/spotlight-kiran-jain-city-of-oakland/feed/0City Applications Open: Enlist the Fellowshttp://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/22/city_applications/
http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/22/city_applications/#commentsWed, 22 Jan 2014 21:41:45 +0000Dana Oshirohttp://www.codeforamerica.org/?p=29305Code for America’s City Fellowship application is officially open and we know the competition to enlist the Fellows will be fierce. For those of you who are new to Code for America, here’s a brief summary of the Fellowship:

Code for America’s Fellowship is a one year program where developers, designers and researchers are embedded in local government to work alongside local public servants building apps, fostering new approaches to problem solving, and tackling community issues.

Tips for Success

Typically successful city applicants had ongoing conversations with Government Relations Director Luke Norris (luke[at]codeforamerica.org) between January and March. If your city/county is interested in Code for America and exploring how the Fellowship can assist you in achieving your goals and outcomes, please contact him at your earliest convenience. Other useful resources to review before submitting an application include:

Apply for the Fellowship

We’re excited to work with our upcoming city partners in tackling our nation’s toughest issues. Enlist the fellows and help us redesign a government that is by the people, for the people, for the 21st century.

]]>http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/22/city_applications/feed/0Code for America Alpha Websitehttp://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/17/code-for-america-alpha-website/
http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/17/code-for-america-alpha-website/#commentsFri, 17 Jan 2014 20:17:03 +0000Michal Migurskihttp://www.codeforamerica.org/?p=29246Code for America made a new website. It’s almost done, and we’d like to show it off!

We’re doing something a little different with this one, by releasing it at alpha.codeforamerica.org for community feedback before replacing the current site. Last week, we shared this new URL with the a small portion of CfA community: staff members, current and former fellows, and Brigade Captains. Our goal was to solicit feedback on the content, asking for input on people’s bios, the story of each city partner, and write-ups about the apps and code we’ve worked on in the past. Today, we’re sharing the pre-release version of the site with the public for broader feedback. Have a look, poke around, and tell us what you think by opening an issue or pull request on the GitHub repository at codeforamerica/codeforamerica.org.

Our old site is a fairly standard non-profit site describing our programs and inviting people to contribute to the cause. We designed the new site to engage more of our community members more quickly: specifically to bring citizen-coders and government representatives to a place where they can *do* something — where they can start coding for America — as soon as possible.

At the same time, we wanted the site to express certain core design values that have to do with who we are:

Openness: the idea that this is an accessible, welcoming place that shares its secret sauce.

Currency: our commitment that the site is up to date both in terms of its content and how it actually works.

Optimism: this is fundamental to Code for America — we believe that citizens and governments can work together to make things better.

The site is a collaboration between our internal tech and communications teams and the UK agency ClearLeft. Most of the internal work was done by myself, Dana Oshiro, and Cyd Harrell — and there was a lot of internal work. We intentionally used the skillsets we had in house to reduce the scope of the work we contracted out. Specifically, we did user research, created explicit design goals, wrote a v1 information architecture, prepared our content for migration by culling hundreds of out-of-date pages on the old site, provided rough page sketches for top-level pages, and made key technical decisions up-front.

While I’d met some of the ClearLeft team before, the rest of us were strangers separated by an ocean and nine timezones. We chose to work with ClearLeft because they develop a pattern portfolio (a pattern/style library) which would allow us to scale our work to our Brigades. This unique approach has aligned perfectly with our work style and decentralized organizational structure.

From the beginning, we all agreed that working in an agile way was going to get the best results. Up-front polished wireframes and detailed IA documentation was skipped in favor of rough sketches, content tested on the current website, and an iron-clad daily check-in meeting first thing in the morning for SF and last thing in the evening for Brighton. In the end, we were billed zero project management hours, normally a quarter or more of a design project budget. We made the absolute most of our contract expense by “buying” only those capabilities we did not have on staff and by structuring an extremely focused engagement. The total external money spent did not reach six figures.

We’ll have lots more to say about the work in the coming weeks as we approach a complete launch. Our design partners at Clearleft in Brighton, UK will talk a bit about the transatlantic development process of site markup and visual design. We’ll describe some of the technical decisions to use tools like Git and Jekyll to run the new site, and why those might be appropriate for our local government partners to adopt. We’ll run through the markup and style pattern portfolio that lets us release an alpha site with a gold master look.

We’ll also talk about work that came before before the design, including UX research that informed the goals of the site, the visual interface guide effort that gives it a consistent brand, and the agile content development process that made our existing website an important component of the design of the new one. This release is a foundation for our future online presence, which will evolve as we grow. Getting to this point has involved many people in the Code for America community through interviews, pull requests, or just doing what they do in public where we can understand it. Thanks to all of you.

Even in his introduction, Chopra identified what he called “four levers to pull” for those in civic hackers and innovators in attendance. To a room full of Code for America Fellows, startups, staff, and mentors he offered the following:

1. Open up Data: Chopra talked about identifying opportunities to open datasets being in the best interest of all those involved;

2. Opportunities for Standards: He saw rapidly prototyping a data standard as a legacy that would not only encourage third party developers but would provide lasting impact to a city;

3. Issuing a Challenge: He saw the opportunity in building capacity through hackathons, competitions, and data challenges; and finally,

4. Lean Evangelism: Says Chopra, “Any level of government can benefit from this toolset.”

With the forefather of the “lean movement” Ries sitting next to him, Chopra praised lean methodologies as a sustainable model for creating innovation in government. In adding to the conversation, Ries offered, “When you have a problem — put a startup on it. They’re cheap and they fail quickly all the time. It’s just a matter of education. ”

Ries and Chopra talked about the original healthcare.gov site released in 2010 as a model where a government agency worked like a successful startup.

THE SUCCESS OF THE ORIGINAL HEALTHCARE.GOV

Despite the debacle of the current healthcare.gov release, Chopra offered a fascinating story about the original success of healthcare.gov. In 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was written into law, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was mandated to create a public-facing website within 90 days of the law’s enactment. At the time the site was owned by the Public Affairs group and was slated to be a brochure-style site. Nevertheless, both Chopra and current U.S. CTO Todd Park realized that in order to serve citizens, the site needed to be modeled as an app rather than as a brochure. It was then that a series of cross-functional working teams were built, scope was set to a smaller MVP product, and the decision was made to release without pricing. Ninety days after the release, an API was offered to third party developers and to this day, that same data powers Healthfinder.gov.

Another successful government project that both Ries and Chopra identified was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) redesign of the mortgage disclosure form. Explained Chopra, Know Before You Owe was released and received 17,000 visitors — all of whom offered their online feedback about mortgage disclosure forms. In that period of time, the CFPB amended the forms no fewer than seven times and used their insights from public release to continue to optimize the process.

Says Ries, “It’s not about creating a huge RFP process. It’s about incremental releases over time that challenge our assumptions and help us learn what we need to know.”

When asked what advice Chopra, Ries, and O’Reilly had for civic hackers and fellows, they each offered their insight:

Said Chopra, “Solve the problem that the person you report to was put on this earth to solve. Everybody has their thing and they’ll love you if you solve that for them.”

Offered Ries, “Continue to ask yourself, ‘What did you learn and what do you know?’.”

And from O’Reilly, “It’s important to remember that the real people you report to are the citizens and not just those within government. When you meet the needs of the citizens and your partners and allies will be happy.”

]]>http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/16/mentor-reception/feed/0CEO for Cities: “Stop Waiting for Washington”http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/15/ceos_for_cities/
http://old.codeforamerica.org/2014/01/15/ceos_for_cities/#commentsWed, 15 Jan 2014 21:01:32 +0000Lee Fisherhttp://www.codeforamerica.org/?p=29183This guest post is by Lee Fisher, President and CEO of CEOs for Cities. Lee is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Economic Development at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs and has served as Ohio Lt. Governor, Director of the Ohio Department of Development, Chair of the Ohio Third Frontier Commission, Ohio Attorney General, State Senator, State Representative, and President/CEO of the Center for Families and Children, one of the largest human service nonprofits in the Midwest.

A few years ago I moderated a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative and the President of Iceland, Olafur Grimson, said something that resonated with the audience. He noted that we Americans spend too much time waiting for Washington. He’s right. While most of us hope that some measure of short-term sanity and compromise will return to Washington in the New Year, the long term prospects remain bleak.

In an era where federal and state governments are increasingly hyper-partisan and dysfunctional, budgets are tight, and the world is evolving at lightning speed, it is critical for cities and metropolitan regions to take control not only of their futures but the nation’s future.

While Washington postures and argues, change is happening across America from the bottom up. The laboratories of most of this change are cities and surrounding metro regions. The innovation is nothing short of remarkable and inspiring. But as I travel to a different city each week, one thing has become evident. Most cities lack a coherent, easily understandable framework and strategy for connecting local innovation and revitalization in a way that is measurable and sustainable.

Many theories of economic invigoration have flooded our pipelines in recent years—some claim the key to city revitalization is drawing a larger portion of the highly mobile creatives by leveraging their preferred urban amenities, others emphasize the importance of incentive packages in remaining competitive in business attraction. With so many messages flying about, it is difficult to muddle through and define a course of action that is effective and meaningful—so where should cities and regions look?

First, given the complex, interconnected problems that cities and regions face, it is critical to first research, frame, and organize work that puts a focusing lens on the city and region, and helps to see and understand the critical levers for city and regional success. Framing is critically important, because, as Wayne Dyer has noted, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” It is important to benchmark city/regional performance in the four areas most vital to CITY success: Connections, Innovation, Talent, and Your distinctiveness. These are a city’s vital signs.

Second, it’s equally important to motivate, mobilize, focus, and accelerate action. The Power of Progress is is based on what Harvard Professor Teresa Amabile calls the “progress principle”—the single most important motivator and catalyst of positive action is making progress and showing forward momentum in meaningful work. Small but regular “wins” have a cumulative increase, and can trigger much bigger reactions.

The progress principle informs what we call our City Dividends, premised on research and experience that show measurable progress, or “moving the needle,” on targeted work reaps huge economic growth dividends for cities, and accelerates movement on important goals. City Dividends focus this idea down to the power of one: showing that the difference in one percentage point, one mile, one measurement (a small step) has the potential to yield a large economic dividend (a big idea)—which helps demonstrate measurable progress.

CEOs for Cities has already developed three City Dividends—the Talent, Green, and Opportunity Dividends. Each dividend reflects one small change that leads to a big difference:

The Talent Dividend: A one percentage-point increase in the four-year college attainment rate for the population aged 25 and older in the 51 largest U.S. metropolitan areas is associated with an $856 increase in annual per capita income for the metropolitan area, totaling an increase $143 billion for the entire nation.

The Green Dividend: If we can reduce the number of miles traveled per person per day in the 51 largest U.S. metro areas by one mile, the nation would save $31 billion on fuel and the expense of purchasing and maintaining vehicles.

The Opportunity Dividend: A one percentage-point reduction in poverty in the nation’s 51 largest metro areas is associated with government savings of $31 billion per year—as each additional person in poverty is associated with $19,000 in anti-poverty expenditures in a metropolitan area.

While the idea of a dividend is far from revolutionary, it has incredible potential in the face of approaching revitalization and growth, for three important reasons.

Focus is a powerful change agent.

We’ve all heard the expression that it’s better to do a few things well than a multitude of things with mediocrity. Focusing on a particular goal allows us to approach a problem with the kind of intensity needed to formulate an action plan that works. By focusing on a small set of dividends, meaningful change can be realized with bigger returns.

With stricter budgets comes the need for bigger ROI

The need to maximize the power of the dollar is absolutely vital in today’s economy. Focusing our efforts more narrowly on what works has been explored, but even more important is determining what gives us the biggest gain. How we measure a certain dividend will come to inform policy and action, so it is vital that the measurements reflect solutions with the highest return. As an example, for a long time education has focused on getting children into college. While this is an important and noble mission, college attendance as a metric for success has led to a greater focus on enrollment, while degree-attainment has a more direct relation to actual success in the workplace, and value to the market. The Talent Dividend embraces this notion, and works to drive more effective change by focusing on what works and gives us the biggest gain. The key to maximizing the potential of the dividend lies in exploring a wide range of focus areas and narrowing in on what’s most important for a particular city.

City Dividends don’t stop with the numbers.
In addition to the power of progress, three other factors inform a theory of action and change through City Dividends—the power of collective impact, the power of networks, and the power of the prize.

Collective Impact focuses on the commitment of a group of leaders from different sectors to a common agenda and set of metrics for solving a complex social problem, and it is the blueprint for success in any meaningful initiative.

According to a report funded by the Knight Foundation, the Power of Networks recognizes that “harnessing the power of networks and enabling individual-to-individual connections can result in impact at a scale and speed unthinkable until recent years.” As a 2012 McKinsey Global Institute report noted, “Be connected. Rather than seeing each other city as competition, building strong connections to other cities can become a collective strength…There are potentially large benefits from being able to tap into the experience of other cities.” The cities and regions that will win in the new networked economy are those that make their boundaries porous to new ideas and talent and demonstrate the humility to understand that there is always something more to learn from someone else, somewhere else.

The Power of the Prize (a concept championed by McKinsey and a number of foundations) recognizes philanthropic prizes and contests as unique and powerful tools to drive innovation and engagement to produce societal benefit. The $1 million Talent Dividend Prize, funded by the Kresge and Lumina Foundations, helps to catalyze, motivate, and accelerate work on the goal of college completion in 57 American cities competing to achieve the greatest increase in college degree completion over a three-year period.

Cities should assess their City Vitals and adopt City Dividends because they can’t afford to drive into the future without collective energy, intense focus, and a well-informed, accelerated path to success.

The future belongs to those cities and regions who can frame their opportunities and challenges, act in ways that demonstrate measurable progress, and connect and engage with the smartest people and the smartest ideas in the most places and in the most ways. In the words of Steve Jobs, the cities and regions that “tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires” will be the ones that change their future and our nation’s future.